El Paso Dog Parks - A Pet Service Directory for West Texas and Southern New Mexico

(1) "Don’t Just Need Me—Lead Me! - For a dog, especially an adopted shelter or rescued dog, love is not the most important thing they need, particularly if they have issues.

Although sharing love and affection makes us feel good, dogs have different psychological needs. What makes a dog feel happy, safe, and psychologically balanced is a) living in a household with an established structure supervised by a gentle but firm leader, and b) feeling they have an established role and place in the pack. While it is a normal human emotion to “feel sorry” for a dog who has had a difficult past, feeling sympathetic or sad serves only to communicate a weak energy to the dog, and dogs will not follow or respect weak energy.

Think of it like this: if someone chose to date you, marry you, or hire you for a job simply because they felt sorry for you, you would be in a permanently weak emotional and psychological state.

Only humans follow instability and accept and nurture weakness; animals attack weakness. We owners can maximize our relationships with our dogs by respecting and honoring a dog’s nature—when we adopt a dog into our family, it is our responsibility to fulfill the dog’s emotional and physical needs first before those of our own."